


What Your Body Told Me in a Dream

by zenzop



Category: The Centricide (Webseries)
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-07
Updated: 2021-01-07
Packaged: 2021-03-18 00:21:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,973
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28608963
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zenzop/pseuds/zenzop
Summary: “But in Jewish tradition, asking forgiveness is a Holy act. Struggling with the temptation to do something to do something one knows is deeply wrong and overcoming it is valued deeply. And once, many years ago, there were rituals that helped people share their struggles with their community, giving people the chance to make amends and have it be seen publicly.” (Rabbi Marisa Elena James)(An alternative look at What Happens After a Leftist Revolution, also existing in a place separate from my usual canon, because I have mixed feelings on this whole thing.)
Relationships: Anarcho-Communism/Communism (Centricide)
Comments: 7
Kudos: 32





	What Your Body Told Me in a Dream

**Author's Note:**

> If you're looking at this and expecting it to be healthy, why the fuck are you doing that, I'm an eighteen-year-old with mommy issues, find healthier relationship patterns.

**(CW// Discussion of death, past unhealthy relationship being resolved a little, wouldn’t recommend to anyone getting out of anything or anyone with a partner who hasn’t really worked on themselves who they still feel tied to, this is more for myself.)**

"Are you sure you want to do this?"

He had asked them one million times, ever since they had won the revolution. As they both woke up in the morning, as they both were eating breakfast, as they both were getting into his car, (hopefully one of the last car rides they'd have to take before public transit was made more widely available), as they were driving.

"Are you sure?" He asked, "We could visit somewhere nicer. We could get a cabin - or something. Go on a hike. I'm not sure."

"Yes, I'm sure."

"I don't want you to feel as if -"

"No, I'm sure this is what I want to do today."

It had been months since things settled into a new order of things - worker's councils, communal farms, democratically operated workplaces. It wasn't perfect, nor was it the end of their development, but it was a beginning of things changing. There was a state - one that qi had found agreeable and also _didn't consider a state, really, if you thought about it_ which _you would know about if you'd actually read Malatesta when I told you to._

Qi was like that sometimes, and he still loved qim for qir levity and stubbornness.

They shut their car doors.

It was cold. Colder than usual. Not that he was one to complain about the cold, after all of these years, but - the air was crisp and it changed the tone of things, and he was wearing a long jacket and sweater and scarf, like he usually was, even though qi insisted on their usual outfit of crust pants and a hoodie for reasons moreso relating to personal comfort.

He was still learning to have respect for that.

And they both looked out, onto the same field they had looked out onto almost one hundred years ago, yellow flowers, still blooming, surprisingly, like they had back then.

He wondered who tended to these places, these places made sacred through their connection to a shared personal experience. Who kept them and preserved them in their absence. Maybe this was just part of the ground, flowers that kept blooming yearly without intervention.

He felt he was on ground that felt unholy to walk on. He felt like burning it, and burning everything that reminded him of it, of burning their record of a shared trauma. A trauma he had inflicted, one he wanted to take responsibility for and didn't know how to.

His stomach felt sick.

He decided on smoking as he looked at it, feeling years of bitterness and resentment from their partner unearth itself, and a shared silence had fallen over them.

And qi was standing there, opposite to him, suddenly feeling very stupid for proposing this in the first place. Because what did qi expect from him? From revisiting and reminiscing on past mistakes? Why it had taken qim so long to move forward, chastising qimself for all the personal failures that had brought qim here.

Maybe in the context of the time, qis death was a necessary sacrifice. Maybe it was the only way of ensuring some possibility of safety and structure and stability, but qi wasn’t here to communicate those feelings.

He hated himself for this one mistake, on top of everything else, of course. A bitterness in his footsteps he would take to his grave, would try to spend a lifetime making up for.

Is there a number of small acts you can give someone to make up for the damage done by something this massive? There wasn't a receipt, no number printed out telling him how many times he would have to make qim soup when he was sick, no finite number of kindnesses he could grant qim that didn't feel like an obligation to make up for things. No amount of tokens and small gifts that "just reminded him" of qir smile, or that he thought qi would like, that make up for sending someone as young as qi was back then to an early grave.

"I'm - just glad you tell me you're sorry," qi said, finally breaking a stiff resentment boiling in both of them, "I'm glad I get to know that you regret things. I'm glad I get to know you won't do this again."

"That's not a blessing," he responded, a bark in his voice, "You shouldn't have to live with what I did in the first place."

"I'm still glad."

"You shouldn't have to be."

"Don't lecture me on how to forgive you."

He shut his mouth again, opened it, trying to process a response. There wasn't one adequate.

"Where were we? When you did it. Everything around this is blurry."

He silently walked out, Ancom in tow as he tried to find the spot. The spot qi died, the spot qi was buried. The cross was gone, as he expected, but he remembers it well, and chose to disclose the secrets of what used to be there.

"I set up a cross," He admitted, spitting out the words more than anything else, "Wrote the name you used to go by on it - Mikhail Arshinov, I think it was. I didn't know how to decorate it. I just wanted you to have a nice place to rest. I know neither of us are Christian, but -"

Qi looked at him, as his words faded out and he fell silent again.

"Tied your black facemask to it. It was the least I could have done."

"I think the least you could've done was have the decency to not drag your oldest friend out to a field and shot them while their army was still fighting your war."

"I'm sorry."

"Did you really think that it would make sure we achieved something great?"

"That was stupid of me, clearly."

"I don't know if I could fault you for it," qi said, a laugh carrying the second half of their sentence, "I'm sure the Black Army looked like a bunch of little boys marching around a potato field to you."

"You did more for the Red Army than most people, though. I don't know if I would be here unless you had been there. Would probably be me in a grave."

Qi sat down on the dirt, probably close to where qir body laid, still mulling over the events of what had happened there, what that represented to both of them. And while he could fault material conditions until he was exhausted, he couldn't expect to be excused that easily, and agreed with himself that he didn’t want to be.

"I still wonder what would have happened if it were me down there," he asked.

"I ain't sure, I don't think it would've gone well."

"I'm not certain," he said, couching down, only coattails and shoes touching the ground, "You've always had a talent for terrifying fascists."

Qi scoffed.

"Maybe," "Expanding was always the issue. Who knows. Whether it was The Free Territory of Russia or The United Socialist States, we might’ve wound up getting eaten and consumed back into capitalism. Maybe I’d be the one with the complicated history."

"Still. It's nice to think of the possibilities."

"Would you be mad? If it was you down there."

"If it lead to actual communism? I'm not sure if I would have the right."

"You're too stubborn."

"Maybe. I would probably come back anyways."

“You’ve never thiought enough of yourself.”

He laughed out a short, “probably not.”

It was rare for him to try and be vulnerable with anyone. It went against most of what his mind told him to do. But he reached out and grabbed Ancom's hand, grabbed it hard enough for it to hurt, neither of their hands soft, or delicate, both of them littered with scars and callouses and pockmarks.

"Where do we go from here?" Qi asked, "This isn't even written as a revolution in America, this is a return to Ukraine, at this point we're just replicating ourselves inside of capitalism. We're not doing anything new."

"I'm not sure," Commie said, "But we're here, да? We're here and we're here to talk things through. I think it's an opportunity."

"One I had to drag you into."

He paused.

"Do you expect me to trust you again?"

"I don't," he said, "I want to believe you will, but I don't."

"I need you to act as the future. I need us to not repeat ourselves. I need us to create a future, not replicate ourselves endlessly."

"I know," he said, "it's just ghosts are hard to exorcise. It's hard to ignore our history together."

That was the feeling, of course. That this land was haunted. That this was the past repeating itself endlessly, and this was their refusal to participate in the replication. Obstinate and stubbornly refusing to kill each other, muddying the lines between the two actors. Not in a demand that y _ou shall not_ , instead a statement of intent. _I will not. I refuse._

He'd say it to himself every morning if he had to.

“Do you think you can ever forgive me?” He asked.

“I think I love you too much not to try.”

“Do you think we’re too tied to our past to build a future?”

“I’m not sure who else will. I’m willing to try. I think it’s our job.”

He rattled something off in his head about a potential opportunity for a joke - something about anti-organization anarchists or anti-work communists, but he knows better than that, and knows it will just gain him another lecture on the subject, of which he has heard many.

Qi knew that he knew that qi wasn’t doing this for him because he deserved it, nor was it because qi did anything out of a feeling of obligation. That qi would be well within qir rights to leave at this point, that qi could say that qi’s sorry, but it’s not working, but qi didn’t, still didn’t, and still was happy to stay. Was happy to grow again together. Felt like it. Still did. Even with new boundaries.

And he asked, plainly, "what would you want to plant here? Anything. I'll ask for it. Submit it to one of the Soviets. Write a letter. Fill out the paperwork. Any crop you want."

Qi paused.

"I think I want the people using it to decide what they want themselves."

That was like qim. He laughed at himself for expecting qim to give any other answer.

Qi smiled a bit, more to qimself than anyone.

"I do want this place gone, though."

And he understood.

And it was, sometime in the next few months. Uprooted, and gone.

The author can't describe the totality of the shifts that happened, or how they happened, or whether the changes lasted, or whether this revolution was international. How people changed, in relation to the mode of production. They don’t know if that’s their job to do on their own, in a world so deeply entrenched in Capitalism. But the field changed. And they were happy with the small change. And they were happy to get back to work - him, reading out letters and writing them out to the councils, always co-ordinating, always changing things, always making amendments, with qim over his shoulder, revising notes, always brilliant in qir suggestions.

And, somehow, in the middle of transforming themselves, in trusting the processes of humanity, the meals he cooked for qim felt like they came from a place of sincerity, not out of a place of begging for a complicated form of forgiveness, and that was enough for him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title is from Detail of the Woods by Richard Siken fuck yeah I am gay thank you for asking
> 
> Part of me still thinks that Ancom leaves one day, just kind of goes in the middle of the night. and Commie isn’t surprised, so if you think this ends happily in my mind, you might be incorrect. I'm going to make it clear I ship this more in a Spike and Buffy way and G-d I feel old saying that, I promise I'm only eighteen I just watch old media. I mean this in a "I love you," "No you don't, but thank you for saying it" kind of way, which is why I'm sectioning it off into its own reality and leaving it be. 
> 
> Answer in the comments: What car does Tankie drive ding ding ding out of time the correct answer is a huge fuckoff jacked up pickup truck

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from Detail of the Woods by Richard Siken fuck yeah I am gay thank you for asking
> 
> Part of me still thinks that Ancom leaves one day, just kind of goes in the middle of the night. and Commie isn’t surprised, so if you think this ends happily in my mind, you might be incorrect. I'm going to make it clear I ship this more in a Spike and Buffy way and G-d I feel old saying that, I promise I'm only eighteen I just watch old media. I mean this in a "I love you," "No you don't, but thank you for saying it" kind of way, which is why I'm sectioning it off into its own reality and leaving it be. 
> 
> Answer in the comments: What car does Tankie drive ding ding ding out of time the correct answer is a huge fuckoff jacked up pickup truck
> 
> Also, I have a twitter acct. for this now since I need to post my thoughts more often, it's @Zenzcent, thank you. If you leave a comment, I'll be happy for a few hours, so thank you for that as well.


End file.
